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KERES HAS DREAMT wilder things than the life she currently lived. Rather, she was not living, but instead meagerly existing. The finest schism tread between the two objectives, and while one side adhered the beauty of adventure, goal-chasing, and experience, the other lingered along hours spent watching the clock, letting time run thin. She wondered if it was too late to break the habit, to quit existing and begin living. Yet even so, this was not the life she would ever imagine living—a life with restrictions, with darkness swallowing the Wizarding World.
She felt herself beginning to miss everything: comfort, protection, the providence of necessities— all of which she was given at Home.
Hogwarts.
Hogwarts was her home, where even in the coldest dungeons she was set to rest every night, there was such an unmistakable coziness immersing between her friends and herself. Hogwarts was where she discovered every angle of her magical capabilities, where she was groomed into the cerebral young witch she is today. Hogwarts was where she'd meet her owl, Artemis, by the Common Room window every morning with letters for her family. Hogwarts was the place she longed to be every summer, and oftentimes, the place she wanted to be far away from whenever things felt too chaotic— whenever she believed it to be more than she was meant to handle.
And yet here she was, a conscript, a Death Eater, a refugee, a follower.
A believer in what could be.
Here she was, with the Dark Lord treading within her vicinity aimlessly, the bottom of his black cloak billowing behind him with his haste steps, whispers leaving his lips like incoherent hisses. He tried, with great abandon, to keep himself awake, his eyes darting left to right and right to left. He would not lose his conscience to lassitude, that Keres knew well. However, she felt a sickening emptiness in her stomach growing unbearable, and through the cutting tension did it erupt a growl, conceding to her ravenousness.
Chagrined, she meekly glances up at him, praying desperately that he had not heard her admittance to hunger. Yet, his intrapersonal hissing ceases all at once, his head tilting subtly before he turns to face her. Riddle glides his tongue along his bottom lip, the trail of saliva glistening against the peony pigmentation. Keres notices that distinct muscle in his jaw working, his cheeks hollowing only scantly before he murmurs, "Come."
Before Keres could ascend from the window sill, he spins on his heel, walking pompously to the door, and he's already stepping out of the corridor by the time she scurries over.
In the silent manor, their footsteps fill in the tense spaces as they tread, resonating within the hall almost forebodingly. Keres observes the paintings on the wall, most of which scratched through, sheathed in dust, and hanging crookedly from their loosened nails. The manor had evidently been ravaged through long before the presence of the Death Eaters, deeming it an unlikely place for the Aurors to check, at least not within their short period of inhabitance there. She considered the family who once resided here to have been wealthy, a veritable inference regarding the antiques she cautiously steps over, some of which being dragged along the floorboards by the long hem of Riddle's cloak. Her sensitive, tired head aches at the sound of the gold and silver scraping against the ground, reverberating through both the hall and her ears.
